Leo McKinstry

Leo McKinstry is a British journalist and author

Commons is now in crisis over the deal on Brexit, says LEO McKINSTRY

AT THE very moment that our country requires firm leadership, the Government's authority is in tatters. A mood of permanent crisis now engulfs Downing Street, threatening Theresa May's entire Brexit strategy and her very hold on the Premiership.

After a string of recent resignations from her front bench, this should have been the week she fought back as Parliament began its crucial debate on her Withdrawal Agreement with Brussels.

Instead, she finds herself sinking even deeper into the mire. The Commons has become an instrument of further humiliation.

On Tuesday afternoon, in an atmosphere of high tension, the House inflicted no fewer than three historic defeats on her Government, all in the space of just 63 minutes. There has been nothing like it at Westminster since 1978 during the dying days of Jim Callaghan's minority Labour administration, which was the last to be beaten three times in a single day.

One of Tuesday's votes was in favour of a vital amendment put forward by the arch Remainer and legal expert Dominic Grieve, who proposed that MPs, not the Government, should take charge of the Brexit legislative process in the event of May's deal being rejected.

Given that the Prime Minister's draft agreement now looks hopelessly doomed, Grieve's victory means that the Government has effectively lost any control of the Brexit agenda.

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Tony Benn and Jim Callaghan in 1979 shortly before Labour lost power for 18 years (Image: Gary Weaser/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty)

The road is now open to a host of different options that might secure a majority in the House, including a second referendum or the repeal of Article 50, thereby halting Britain's withdrawal from the EU.

Just as damaging to Mrs May were the other two defeats, which reflected the House's indignation at the refusal of her Government to publish in full the official legal advice on the Withdrawal Agreement, even though the Commons in November had voted decisively in favour of such publication. Ministers could make powerful arguments in favour of discretion. After all, such legal advice to the Government has always been confidential in the past.

Even in advance of the Iraq invasion in 2003, the view of the Labour Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, below, remained secret, despite loud calls from the Commons for disclosure.

In other areas of legal work, client confidentiality is a longestablished principle, precisely because it both protects sensitive information and allows frank views to be expressed. Thanks to Tuesday's decision, a precedent has now been set which could impinge on questions of security, finance and diplomacy.

As Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the House, put it yesterday: "Law officers will be very reluctant to give any advice to the Government that they might then see published on the front pages of the newspapers." MPs, she added, may "live to regret their vote".

But none of this carried any weight with the Commons. Nor was the discontent of MPs quelled by a rare appearance at the dispatch box from the Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox, who gave a wide-ranging legal assessment of Mrs May's deal. Still brimming with dissatisfaction the House voted not only to hold the Government in contempt but to demand immediate publication.

Ministers complied with this instruction yesterday morning. Once the document finally became public, we could see why the Government was so desperate to keep it secret. For the Attorney General's advice confirms all the worst fears about Mrs May's proposed deal: that, rather than achieving independence, it will trap Britain in a permanent Zombie Brexit.

Geoffrey Cox's letter to the Cabinet warns that Mrs May's deal could leave the United Kingdom stuck in "protracted and repeated rounds of negotiations", without any real opportunity of escape. This twilight zone, said Cox, could "endure indefinitely" since "the Withdrawal Agreement cannot provide a legal means of compelling the EU" to expedite talks on a new relationship with Britain.

So we could remain in limbo, deprived of our national freedom and shackled to EU rule. This is not what the majority voted for in the 2016 Referendum. The Attorney General's explosive advice shows that the Tory sceptics were justified in their hostility to Mrs May's dubious agreement, which provides Brexit in name only.

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox's advice has been published against the wishes of the Government (Image: Dinendra Haria/Sopa Images/LightRocket via Getty)

Even Government loyalists, like ex-Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon and former Chief Whip Mark Harper have said that they will vote against the deal because it neither honours the democratic wishes of the British people nor allows Britain to exploit the benefits of independence, especially on trade.

But more damning than any Tory MP's verdict was the condemnation by Lord King, the former Governor of the Bank of England, who said this week that "it simply beggars belief that a Government could be hell-bent on a deal that hands over £39 billion, while giving the EU indefinitely and a veto on ending this state of fiefdom."

Lord King is absolutely right. Indeed, the game was given away by the EU's Secretary General, German bureaucrat Martin Selmayr, who reportedly said "the power is with us" after the signing of Mrs May's deal.

The Prime Minister is in a mess of her own making. As a Remain supporter, she has always seen Brexit as a problem to be minimised, not a cause to be celebrated. Now the grim consequences of her flawed approach have been exposed in the worsening chaos that envelops her Government.